Herhold: How a scribe helped unveil a San Jose scandal

My friend Mark Saylor died a little more than a week ago. At the age of 58, he suffered from an inoperable brain tumor. The Los Angeles Times ran an obituary listing his achievements as the editor of a prize-winning Times team and as a crisis PR exec with international clients.

I knew him before all that, when he and I were young reporters at the Mercury News, part of a wave of new talent hired in the late'70s by then-editor Larry Jinks. I knew Mark when he interviewed Kent Bartkowski, the Man Who Had Trouble Lying.

Mark died far too soon. But I've always believed that talented people do some of their best work in their 20s. And in introducing the public to Bartkowski, Mark played a role in unraveling a memorable San Jose political scandal. (With George Shirakawa Jr., we have a new one).

The year 1979 marked an inflection point for San Jose's politics. The old pro-sprawl infrastructure at City Hall was spinning out of control, and younger leaders --Tom McEnery, Jerry Estruth -- were making their voices heard. District elections were coming.

A majority of the council -- the "Fearsome Foursome'' -- had approved a land reclassification for a mobile home park in Alviso, not far from the sewage treatment plant. It was a dubious plan championed by Councilman Al Garza.

Grand jury probe

After then-Public Works Director Tony Turturici made a comment in closed session about being pressured by Garza, a hubbub ensued. A grand jury investigation began. It might have gone nowhere were it not for Mark and the Man Who Had Trouble Lying.

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Bartkowski was a consultant on the project. He testified that Garza had told him that $22,000 in bribes had gone to various city officials over two years to assure passage of the mobile home park.

Virtually everyone else lied. Bartkowski told the truth to the grand jury. His testimony brought prosecutors much closer to the indictment of Garza and accomplice Sue Hughes (Others were involved, but went unindicted).

Not long afterward, Mark found Bartkowski, who repeated the story he had told to the grand jury. Mark's news story persuaded the public that there was far more to this Alviso issue than an environmental dispute.

On the sidelines

As the county reporter at the time, I followed the news avidly, feeding on the scraps of the story that were thrown my way. I admired the Man Who Had Trouble Lying. I was chartreuse with envy about the colleague who broke the story.

Mark left the Mercury News in 1985, and we stayed in touch, though not as often as we should have. When he called me in October to tell me of his illness, he said he'd like to see me once more. So I flew down to visit him in Pasadena in November.

We talked of career, of old war stories, of life and medicine and kids. He was tired. But his mind showed flashes of its old sardonic humor.

When I asked about Bartkowski, Mark swore me to secrecy about how he found him, which is really only relevant to insiders anyway. What I can tell you is this: He knew what he was looking for when he pounded on Bartkowski's door. He knew how to get an honest man to talk. As a PR exec, he later came to have doubts about journalists. But at 25, Mark produced a scoop that helped change a city.